Author: Heavy Feather

A Haunted Passages Short Story: “Moscow” by Mike Nees

1 You accept the charges, pull the latex cap over your scalp. You can already hear the ambient noise that will signal my arrival, like the startup sound your computer used to play. That soothing drone topped with a few stray piano chords. It doesn’t come out of a speaker, no—it’s just suddenly in your…
Essay: “Mohammed and Me” by Mandy Shunnarah

Our eyes met in the rearview mirror and he looked at me appraisingly. “You look Middle Eastern.” This would have been odd coming from anyone else, but my Lyft driver who’d just picked me up from a watch party for the 2018 midterm elections—with his keffiyeh scarf draped over the passenger seat headrest and his…
Haunted Passages: “The Dreamers of Revolution Never Left,” a short story by Mandira Pattnaik

It’s not that plenary meeting. Yet, little do you know, when you plod on through the rain, through the narrow, stony, cobbled steps towards the ugly backside of the mansion, where the worst possible history is engraved in, that the glossy sheen of natural fur will unnerve you. When you collect the keys of your…
“The Tenacious Unicorn Ranch”: Wednesday Work Day Interview by Hillary Leftwich

Wednesday Work Day is a series started by editor Hillary Leftwich to showcase and support creatives who offer services, both in-person or online, and are impacted by the pandemic and the shutdowns both statewide as well as in other countries. The series will showcase one business or individual that is still able to provide a…
Bad Survivalist Poem: “Let nothing touch the ground” by Sam Rush

The best way to treat bedbugs scream while screaming wait until you die / The best way move drive fast enough to outrun them they can’t fly if you run out of gas scream while you scream wait wait until you die let nothing touch the ground / The best way to treat bedbugs diatomaceous…
“The Bitter Kind”: A Recipe for Flash Fiction Collaboration by James Claffey & Tara Lynn Masih

Ryan Bollenbach here. Heavy Feather Review is publishing short pieces on the blog from writers who have collaborated on previous projects in order to give potential collaborators ideas and stoke excitement for The Zachary Doss Friends in Letters Memorial Fellowship (collaboration itself being the biggest takeaway I hope to create from all this). Please read…
Poetry: “Acceptable Risk” by Tara Campbell

“Acceptable Risk” is a response to the “no-knock” police raid in Louisville on March 13 that ended in the shooting death of 26-year-old African-American EMT Breonna Taylor. Police say they knocked and identified themselves, but Walker and other witnesses in the building say they did not. The officers were not using body cameras. As reported…
Haunted Passages: Two Poems by Carolyn Supinka

Haunted House The haunted house does not require a history, but it needs a mouth: a previous, innocent tenant, someone to live to tell the tale. I can speak for its corners. Very lean and fine, alien landscapes of plateaus and dead red rivers spilling out behind, smoke of past lives burned and rising as…
“Accepting Your Planethood,” a guide by Carolyn Supinka for Bad Survivalist

1 You have just received your diagnosis. At this stage, we advise you try not to think about it too much. It is no small thing to become a planet. Take three deep breaths. If you are near a window, look outside. Do not look directly at the sun, but think about the sun. Feel…